Maths Week at HOLC

Website Link 

Making Maths Accessible

Maths is one of those skills that is essential to success in life.  Many of us are very good at maths because it is something that we do everyday of our lives.  Addition and subtraction is used by everybody that handles money.  This is ideally done mentally and rapidly.  In the UK the average Britain is not as skilled in maths as you would expect for a developed country, (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20712312).  Getting a good grounding in maths is vital!

Haverhill Online Learning Community has been running a week of Maths for Parents activities.  While children are still on the holidays we have been supplying a number of resources for use.  The webpage link has some some general information.  Sub pages include Number Square and Primary Maths.  

The page Number Square has a little explanation of the resources and crucially free downloads.  Parents can download the PDF files for use with their children as they develop their Maths skills.  There are two versions of the Number Square, a Number Square with working area and a larger version.  A sample exercise has been included focussing on place value!  A word document will soon appear where parents can make their own place value grids.  SlideSpeech presentations will be added  in due course explaining more of the resources and how to use them.

The Primary Maths page is developing as the launch page for a series of sub-pages   We are covering in Primary Maths, the Early years as well as  Key Stages 1 and 2.  The pages are still being continually added to  as Haverhill Online Learning Community is a dynamic community. A "complete" website will never exist since learning is ever evolving.  One page with content that is already useful (ie has some content) is General Resources across the Primary Maths Key Stages!.  A sub-page of this Vocabulary for Maths!, seeks to inform parents of the vocabulary that their children use in conversations about maths.  Making your own resources from Magnetic A4 sheets for use on the fridge is also touched upon on the page Magnetic Resources.  On the page Useful Website for Maths Help we are starting to gather together a series of links that can be accessed for interested parents to explore further.

Maths for Parents is the first week of 2013.  We are planning another week closer to Key Stage 2 SATS week the page of which also contains some links to useful revision sites!  Maths is also being visited during Adult Learning Week (the date of which can be found looking on the Calendar of Events page).

Next week we will start to focus on Languages.  Haverhill is now a multilingual community.  English, Chinese, Polish, Urdu, Portuguese and Lithuanian are just some of the languages being spoken.  A key aspect of this is the richness languages bring to our local culture.  The Language project can be found at the page A little Good Language!

This is just a small flavour of what will be developing over the next year aimed at the needs and interests of Haverhill Online Learning Community.   Come and join us over the coming months and contribute to Life Long Learning in the Haverhill Area.